“I knew college was expensive, but I didn’t know it was this expensive.” Sarah, a highly paid executive at Pfizer noted. “We would have saved more.  Now I know that Elisa needs to crush her SATs to get the money for the school she wants.” Sarah had listened to a lecture from a financial planner […]

“It doesn’t matter where you go to college” is one of the most delusional comments that adults will say. I can break this down in multiple ways: where you go generates the population of people that you will meet at a vital time of life; the location where you will be developing relationships and comfort […]

I am surprised by the continued success of Motivate Your Son. This is neither false modesty nor subtle bragging. The book was published in 2012. It continues to sell beyond expectation despite zero marketing in the last few years. Reader e-mails tell me the reason: I was correct in my view that we have an […]

In my years of providing educational counseling to parents and students, I have observed an uptick in anxiety among those interested in college counseling. There are likely several reasons: 1.) Real Economic Disruption I started this work in 2000, mostly focused on SAT prep and then began college counseling a few years later. The Great […]

In providing college counseling through the years, my financial acumen has been called upon with increasing urgency.  Some part stems from my work in the career counseling space.  I have a strong sense of what “pays off”.  Some part stems from deep financial knowledge spurred in part from my early legal career – Securities and […]

More than anything, I am a parent; perhaps “husband” is a tie! The pace of change has increased.  Dramatically. This creates chaos. This creates fear. This makes parents stay up at night. When I started The Learning Consultants, the mission was to help children and young adults. Increasingly, I realized that, by doing so, the […]

“Everyone smokes weed.” I’ve heard this from dozens of students throughout Connecticut. Of course, these are social types and perhaps not very different than those that went out in my generation who drank instead of smoking. Despite being a former criminal prosecutor and one of those rare birds who never tried pot, I am not […]

In the last few years, I have worked with a couple hundred college counseling clients through Fairfield and Shoreline, Connecticut.  I hear many thoughts that make me cringe.  But perhaps the most challenging is a younger parent quoting a friend whose children are a few years older. “One of my friends told me…” Much like […]

“I have a 4.0.  I know that’s not so good,” said a student from a local high school in Shoreline, CT. This was not a joke. Indeed, I am no so accustomed to seemingly crazy statements about high GPAs that I didn’t even pause to see if she was kidding. Her school has a weighted […]

Let me add a few parameters to the question. I will assume most anyone reading this article lives in suburban Connecticut or some similar location.  While there are a lot of really wealthy parents in this area, I’ll further assume I’m addressing an audience that has concerns about how to pay for college. The dilemma […]